René Barbera Tenor

René Barbera is a graduate of the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program and the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center. He is the only singer to have won all three top prizes in the same year at the Plácido Domingo Operalia Competition (the 2011 Opera Prize, the 2011 Zarzuela Prize, and the 2011 Audience Prize). 

He made role debuts as Elvino (La Sonnambula) with the Washington Opera Concert and Ernesto (Don Pasquale) at Chicago’s Lyric Opera. He also made house debuts at the Michigan Opera Theater and Moscow’s Stanislavsky Theatre in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and he gave first performances in Seattle (La Cenerentola), Los Angeles (La Cenerentola) and Santa Fe (La Donna del lago). 

He made his Paris Opera debut in I Puritani. He was invited back to the Paris Opera for Il Barbiere di Siviglia and then sang in La Cenerentola, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Les Troyens (Iopas) in San Francisco. He has also appeared in La Fille du régiment (Tonio) at the Greensboro Opera, Il Barbiere di Siviglia in Los Angeles, La Gazza ladra (Giannetto) and Il Turco in Italia (Narciso) at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, and Der Rosenkavalier (the Italian Singer) in Chicago. 

Since then, he has made house debuts at the New York Metropolitan Opera (L’italiana in Algeri) the Deutsche Oper in Berlin (Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor), Milan’s La Scala (Don Pasquale with Riccardo Chailly conducting), the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich (La Cenerentola), the Vienna Staatsoper (Don Pasquale), and the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam (Il Barbiere di Siviglia). His repertoire of roles also includes Alfredo Germont (La Traviata) at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo and Lord Percy (Anna Bolena) at the Rome Opera.